30 day song challenge, day 25: a song that makes you laugh

This is an easy one, no thought required. A song that is always guaranteed to make me laugh is:

Be Careful, It’s My Heart performed by Bing Crosby.

Obviously, there is a story behind this one. It goes something like this:

Back in the fall of 2000, my Grandpa was going in for a major heart surgery. Quadruple bipass and a valve replacement, the latter part of which sounds very automotive; apropos, since my Grandpa was an auto mechanic. Now, my Grandpa was almost always cheerful, always had a smile, and had an indescribable laugh that was utterly infectious. Upon hearing his laugh, it would no longer matter what it was you were laughing about: his laugh was like a fission reaction that built upon itself, feeding other laughs which in turn fed others until there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.

The night before his surgery, he wasn’t laughing. In fact, he was downright nervous. We went to one of his favorite restaurants for dinner, but even at dinner he seemed unusually subdued. Of course, he was 80 years old and facing major surgery and he was probably wondering if this would be his last meal, his last night. The surgery was scary.

Well, I’d rarely seen him this way and I was at my wit’s end to find some way to make him smile. Finally, I popped in a CD that I had with me and prepared to play Bing’s song. I said to my Grandpa, “Listen, I know you are probably nervous, but I’ve got everything under control. I’ve thought about how to make it clear to the surgeon that he needs to take extra special care of you. I asked to meet him in the morning,” I said, “and I’m going to play him this song.” Then I started the tune, the opening lines of which are:

The subsequent verses didn’t matter. My Grandpa heard those first two lines and all of the strains and stress seemed to melt from his face and he started in on that laugh. Of course, I then started in on the laugh and everyone else around started to laugh as well. And from that moment, to the moment he was wheeled into surgery, he didn’t look worried to me again.

To this day, when ever I think of that song, I hear my Grandpa’s laugh and I can’t help laughing too.